I’d like to thank the three quest bloggers that posted on here while I was away. I thought that everyone did a great job. For the most part the posts were funny and some were a little different than I expected, but they were good. Thanks Sal and good luck with the 30 posts in 30 days - check out my friend Sal’s blog Everyday Thoughts from Life. He’s a great writer with a great blog. I can’t forget the other two bloggers Laura and Ms. Bullwinkle - thanks for the blogs. With that said and done - it’s good to be back and now for my first blog since going away:

I love almost everything about going on vacation, except one thing - coming back to work, but that‘s a different story. Most of the times that I go on vacation I drive to my destination because of the simple fact that I don't like to fly. I don’t like to fly because of a flight that I took once that had so much turbulence I actually thought I saw the angels coming to take me to Heaven. (ok, you can stop laughing now - it’s possible that I’ll end up there). If I had to fly I would fly, but if I don't, then I'm going to drive. All my life, my family has taken off real early in the morning and traveled these long marathon driving sessions. This vacation wouldn’t be any different.

My sister took my dad’s trailblazer to get it washed because she thought it would be nice to make the trip in a nice clean vehicle. Hopefully she’ll want to wash it after the trip when it’s covered with bugs and road kill splash. We waited for my sister to bring the truck back so that my dad and I could load most of the things that we would be taking with us. It was getting late so we decided that everyone should get some sleep and we would take off early in the morning.

During the night I woke up because I had to pee really bad, for those articulate people out there - it means that I had to urinate, so I got up and went to do my thing. I stood there peeing loudly most to help keep me focused. If you’re half asleep and you hear your piss hitting the water then you at least know you’re aiming in the right general direction. I finished, opened the door and was surprised to see my mom standing there waiting for me to finish. I felt a little strange seeing my mom standing there. I try to be a gentleman and hold any gas in when I’m around other people, but when I’m in the restroom or alone in my room then anything goes. I mean that’s what bathrooms are for and your room is your sanctuary - you can do whatever you want In there and you shouldn’t have to justify it to anyone. Now, I didn’t try to fart the ABC’s but what if I had decided to try and fart the ABC’s while I was in the restroom? That’s not something I want my mom to hear me do. I can just imagine it if she had - I’d walk out the door, trying to close it quickly behind me to keep any smells locked up for the next unsuspecting bathroom occupant and my mom would stop me and say something like, “You shouldn’t try and fart the ABC’s, you’ll go blind doing that. That’s what happened to that little blind kid that lived down the block from us when we lived in Fort Leonard Wood. Remember him? He tried to fart the ABC’s and only got up to ‘G’ when he suddenly went blind.”

I guess it was a good thing that I didn’t try to fart the ABC’s so my mom didn’t say anything about any of my bodily functions. She simply asked, “Are you ready to go? I can’t sleep, so I think we should go that way we have more time to spend with your brother and his family.”

I just wanted to go back to sleep but everyone in my family except me likes to travel at night. “It’s cooler, the kids will sleep most of the trip, less cars on the road…etc.” They don’t think the same way I do. They don’t realize there are more alien abductions and night and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some little green man give me an anal probe and lets not forget chainsaw wielding maniacs. We were headed to Texas and that state is famous for it’s chainsaw wielding maniacs.

“Ok,” I said. “I guess we can leave.”

I was gathering some of the of my things to take when my two year niece came up to me and asked, “Gum for you?” and handed me a stick of gum before I could answer.

I took the gum and said, “thanks” but then I had to ask, “Where did you get the gum?”

My niece responds with, “from granma’s purse.” I tell her she better not be going through granma’s purse without asking first. “Ok” she says and bounces off to play.

We finally loaded the rest of the stuff into the trailblazer and start our trip. It was 2:13 AM. It was dark and I was driving the first leg of the trip. I popped in what I think is one of the greatest CD’s ever made The Beatles Abby Road and prepare for the journey.

No sooner than we take off my five year old nephew says he wants to hear “Come Together” and “Strawberry Fields” at which point my two year old niece yells, “No! I don’t like that song.” She wants to hear either “Octopus’s’ Garden” or “Hey Jude”

My mom looks at me and asks, “Your influence?”

I just smile and change the CD so we can all hear “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”

I drove for about two hours before I felt like I was getting too tired to drive. We pulled off to the side of the road and I climbed in the backseat with the kids and my mom took over the driving. It wasn’t long before I was knocked out probably dreaming about Michelle Rodriquez. I woke up to a thumping sound. Thump…thump…thump…thump.

I think we all saw it at the same because we all yelled at the same time. My mom had dozed off and the truck was serving on and off the road. When I woke up I saw the truck serving toward the guardrail that hopefully would keep us from flying off the mountain. My thoughts were,” My mom is going to drive us off the mountain and I’m going to die to George Harrison singing ’Here comes the sun’.” My mom woke up and was able to turn the truck back on the road, serve a little and then gain control. We had a few things going for us: there weren’t any other cars on the road, my mom is actually a very good driver, and apparently she drives pretty slow when she’s sleeping.

After all our heartbeats went back to normal I said, “At least now I have something to write about in my blog.”

For some reason my mom didn’t think that was as funny as I thought it was.

We came to an agreement and banned my mom from driving anymore, so we stop at a gas station to fill the tank and switch drivers. My mom reached for her purse and started fumbling in it looking for the cash we had set aside for the trip. She doesn’t find it. She looks in her little wallet - no cash. She dumps everything from her purse but still there is no cash to be found. The cash is gone. We were just outside of Phoenix with only $22.35 between the whole bunch of us and the kids were starting to get hungry and were complaining. “I have to get out and stretch my legs. I’m getting butt cramps” My nephew cried. It wasn’t long after that that my niece complained about butt cramps too. I took the kids out of the truck so they could stretch their legs while my mom continued to look for the money. We couldn’t figure out where my mom had lost the entire trip money and if you know me - you know that I don’t use a checking account or credit cards. I don’t even have an ATM card - wow, maybe I am a hippie? It’s at that point I remember my two year old niece offering me a stick of gum from granma’s purse. We wonder if she might have pulled it out or if it fell out when she was going through the stuff in the purse looking for the gum. I kept racking my brain to try and think of someone I might know in the area, since we used to live in Mesa a while back, but I couldn’t think of anyone or at least not anyone who could loan me gas money. My mom kept looking and finally found an old ATM card from a bank account she used to have.

“I think there was still $5.00 in there. We can try it. There might be a fee if we use it, but we have to do something.” We used the card. I expected it to stop at five dollars, but it didn’t. I filled the truck with gas and we would worry about bank fees later.

My mom thanked God for letting her find the old ATM card and letting us get a full tank of gas and then suggested that we should stop and eat something. We went at a KFC close to the gas station because the kids wanted chicken and they seem to like KFC. I went to take my niece out of the car seat when she says, “I don’t feel good. I sick.”

“You’re not sick” I start to say but didn’t get to finish the sentence when she threw up all over me. I look down at my shoulder and arm and say, “I don’t remember you eating Corn Pops today” She threw up again and again it looked like Corn Pops or maybe it was little cheese balls with gravy, but I don’t remember her eating that either. I cleaned her up and cleaned myself up as best as I could, then stood in line so I could order our food.

I ordered a chicken breast and a chicken strip combo. What I got looked nothing like what they had on the picture. My chicken was all dried up and wrinkly looking. Maybe it was Halloween zombie chicken. The strip looked like a shaved piece of rubber. It was fat on one end and very thin on the other and you could bend it or bounce it on your table for the kids enjoyment. I took the order back and waited until some very tall, old as dirt lady with a pinched face came up to me and asked if she could help me. I told her that I wanted a fresh chicken breast because I didn’t like old shivered up breasts and I also wanted a non-rubbery chicken strip.

She actually picked up both the chicken breast and the chicken strip and looked at them, turning them over and over. “Humm” she said, “These just came out of the fryer, but I’ll give you another one if you want one.”

“Yes, I want a new one of each” I wasn’t going to eat them before and I sure wasn’t going to eat them after she held them in her hands. She gave me a new breast and a new chicken strip so I went back to my table where my family was almost done eating at this point and began to eat my food. I pulled the skin off my chicken and all I saw was dark meat. When did chicken breast become dark meat? I got up again and went to the counter one more time

“This is not a breast” I said, “It looks like a thigh”

The cashier looked at it and said, “no, it’s a chicken breast.”

“No, chicken breasts are white meat. This is clearly dark meat.”

“I know the difference between a thigh and a breast and that’s a breast”

I pulled all the crust off the chicken piece and said in my best Tony Soprano voice, “You want to look at that again?”

The cashier looked again and gave me a new breast. I went to sit at my table where my family had already finished eating and started to eat the breast when I heard this rumbling sound coming from the direction of my niece.

She started laughing and said, “I farted.” I tried to quiet her down because there were people around us but she kept on saying it almost singing the words, “I farted. I farted. I farted.” the bad thing about it was that it began to smell really bad. How could such a bad smell come out of someone so small and so cute? It was time to go. I grabbed her and carried her with my arms extended as far as they would go so as to keep the smell as far away from as possible, to the car where I found out she had diarrhea and I was the lucky one who got to change her.

I yelled, “Oh my Gawd! That’s nasty.” My niece just laughed as I gagged while changing her. “This is so freakin’ disgusting.”

My niece just sang, “I farted it…la…la….la….la….I farted….la…la…la…la…I farted…”

My mom laughed and said, “You can put that in your blog too.”

For some reason I didn’t think that was as funny as she thought it was.